Earth-moving gear gets to work amid hunger and corruption
Gunungsitoli (AsiaNews/Agencies) Bulldozers began their demolition work only yesterday after Nias Island was struck by two major quakes on March 28. Overall, 12 machines are at work. In the meantime, the first medical aid has arrived on board of the US Hospital ship.
The situation is dramatic. Gunungsitoli resident are fighting over humanitarian aid after leaving the relative safety of the hills where they had found refuge from the quake.
Meat is available but not rice, Indonesians' main staple.
A UN representative said that "all those who can, from land owners to corrupt government officials, are hording rice to resell at higher prices".
The government said it distributed 900 tonnes of rice to survivors, but many complain they did not receive any of it.
Rescue teams who reached the affected areas are desperately seeking medical aid to treat the hundreds of thousands of wounded who are currently lying in field hospitals.
According to the Australian government which is funding aid, a US hospital ship in the area has taken hundreds of patients aboard but cannot leave because it lacks a medical team.
UN sources put the death toll at 1,300, mostly on Nias Island.
Survivors are in despair after the latest natural disaster. Ella Tan, 26, owned a block of flats that is now destroyed. "For us' she said, "life has been snuffed out". The bodies of her sister, brother and parents are somewhere under the rubble. Her family was one of the most prominent entrepreneurial groups of the area in the textile field.
After an hour of digging, the rubble still refuses to give up the bodies, but Ella Tan won't stop. "I'll dig till a find the bodies, and then I'll leave this place". She is planning to restart her life in Jakarta.
Like her, thousands of Nias residents are ethnic Chinese and they, too, are planning to leave the island.
Herman, the owner of an ice-making factory that is now a mass of rubble, said: "It's all over. We don't have the energy to start all over."
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11/10/2018 11:14
04/04/2006
